Determining the Priorities of Using Web 2.0 Features in the Iran's Public Library Management System (Saman)

The Web 2.0 creates a collaborative and interactive space that can be achieved by launching its features and capabilities in a software environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the priorities of using Web 2.0 features in the Iran's Public Library Management System (Saman) from the perspective of librarians working in the public libraries of Tehran Province.

The present study is a descriptive-survey study which is practical in terms of purpose. The statistical population of this research included 559 librarians in Tehran public libraries from whom 240 persons were selected based on the Morgan’s table. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire consisting of 103 items, i.e. features, which were categorized into seven main criteria. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by several experts in the area of knowledge and information science (KIS) and its reliability was calculated by the Cronbach's alpha at at 0.98. The questionnaire had questions with a range of five Likert values ​​from 1 to 5. Finally, the Friedman's statistical test was used to analyze the research hypotheses.

The results show that the ability to have a personal profile (included in the criterion of “user's profile”), providing full bibliographic information and the details of documents production (included in the criterion of “full view of souces”), providing guidance (included in the criterion of “content”), and asking the librarian (included in the criterion of “user participation”) have the highest priority from the librarians' viewpoint, and the features of other criteria have equal priority. Furthermore, in the criteria surveyed, those features having characteristics related to social platforms received had lower mean ranks than than other features, and it seems that the main concern of librarians is to search for resources and providing more services in order to identify the resources needed by users in whatever way they will using Web 2.0 features.

Since the priorities of using Web 2.0 features in the Iran's Public Library Management System (Saman) have not been examine till now, results of the present research can be useful for upgrade the Saman software. Moreover, according to the findings, the Saman software support the main feature of Web 2.0 such as user's profile, user participation and notification in a lesser degree than the common features of library softwares such as searching and viewing documents. Therefore, the findings of this research can help the decision makers in this area to make the necessary plans for the future of this software.